


Changes

by write_light



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:45:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long-delayed vacation from the approaching Apocalypse puts Sam and Dean into the middle of a nasty fight between a psychotic hunter and his prey.  But it's Thanksgiving, a day for family.  Can't we all just get along?</p><p><strong>Teaser:</strong> Dean's head hit the front of the vending machine hard and all the happy was gone.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andreth47](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=andreth47).



> This story is **dedicated to the memory** of  andreth47, who passed just a year after this was written. Working with her was a pleasure (and a wonderful challenge for my writing skills); I wish now that I had more prompts of hers to work on. She asked for frottage, massage, touch, interrupted/withheld sex, public sex, bottom!Dean, Team Badass! as well as a rollicking bar brawl. I tossed in violence & blood, fist fights & knife fights, dirty motels & dive bars, monsters, sex, and a surprising change of heart, all as part of the **samdeanexchange** (Spring 2010). Lyrics from "Strange Face of Love" by Tito  & Tarantula and "Bat Out of Hell" by Meatloaf **at her request.  
>  Betas:** the wonderful **cherie_morte** , who was both prompt and thorough & my good friend **afg1** , who contributed a couple of key lines.

**1**

 _Oh and down in the tunnel where the deadly are rising  
Oh I swear I saw a young boy-_

 **New Orleans – November 20, 2009**

A late fog hung over the ward, obscuring the foundations not yet rebuilt, graves for the homes and their inhabitants still, six years on. Rising above the fog like the voodoo-summoned were the few blind houses, long abandoned to the elements, wearing their eye-patches of plywood. A man with an unkempt tussock of hair and a face like a pug-dog moved silently among the houses, looking for something.

By the rotten, ruined walls of a small cottage was the hollow where he had found her, stuffed under the roots of a fallen magnolia tree – one more victim of the hurricane of '65. Her arms were locked around what might have been his son, if something hadn't taken what it needed to survive over the long months of waiting and hungering. All those months waiting for the stench to thin out, for some sign of life to return – things had bred and grown again in the forgotten corners.

The man turned away from the open pit left by the long-gone tree; for him, it was their grave, now a blasphemy of debris and garbage. His large eyes stared unblinking at the storm drain across the street. There was tell of a ghoul around here. A young boy, they said. He thought only of the ways he would kill it.

Red knew what he was hunting now, and it hadn't drowned with everyone else in '65. It had fed, and fed, and grown careless in its gluttony. It had taken his precious wife and son and then played with his son's body, taking his image. People said it was his delirium, but he saw his son at the foot of his bed, and again later, running off to hide in the sewer and wait for another meal.

Red's eyes were full of tears of rage back then – at Heaven and at Hell. He tried to find an answer, but the police only told him to seek counseling, the priests told him simply to pray. He took the third road and became a hunter. Now even that fraternity had turned on him, all over his killing of one of their own, one who'd spared a vampire's life. That act had been, for Red, an act of personal justice, done in his son's name.

Now he saw his boy, his Charlie, staring out from the storm drain. Red didn't shiver or shed a tear. He just took the shotgun from his belt and fired at it, hitting nothing but concrete. He was closing in on it for the last time. The ghoul wouldn't play its sick games with his Charlie any more.

The fog seemed to swirl into the drain, then out again, like the breath of the beast biding its time.

 **2**   


_He's back on the street with no regrets_

 **Sioux Falls – November 20, 2009**

With a roar that made the three Hell's Angels weep, Dean's baby leapt onto the road, finding its footing there, and its home.

"Ha HA, look at them!" Dean laughed, watching the bikers' envy in the rear-view as the Impala skidded slightly and he gunned the engine a few more times.

Sam was unimpressed, but at least Dean seemed to be in a better mood, and with Cas gone, maybe they both were.

"Turn south at Sioux Falls and we'll be out of South Dakota," he offered, but Dean needed no navigator.

"She knows where she's goin', Sam. Dontcha?" he added in a hushed voice, rubbing the dash.

The car shimmied subtly, as if in answer, and a sign for Sioux Falls flashed past.

"You think Bobby can handle Cas for two weeks? Keep him out of our hair?" Sam sounded concerned and Dean didn't want to hear that for the next ten hours.

"Bobby – can do anything," Dean replied. "Although with _your_ hair… those sideburns gonna get any longer, Sam?"

Sam flicked a Cheeto at Dean.

Dean caught it, popped it in his mouth, and grinned. "Something feels right," he said.  _And it sure hasn't for a while._   "Gonna be a good trip."

* * *


	2. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-delayed vacation from the approaching Apocalypse puts Sam and Dean into the middle of a nasty fight between a psychotic hunter and his prey. But it's Thanksgiving, a day for family. Can't we all just get along?

**3  
**   


  
_You know I'd rather be damned with you  
Well, if I gotta be damned, you know I wanna be damned   
Dancing through the night with you_

 _  
_

  
**Metairie / New Orleans – two days to Thanksgiving**

The drive south to New Orleans had taken four days, not two, in part because they spent the entire second day in bed. Only occasionally were there interruptions for pizza delivery, and one very quick beer run.  They were making up for lost time and a lost sense of balance, and they couldn't – wouldn't – be rushed.  With the help of a deeply sexual massage technique that Sam said he'd "picked up somewhere," Dean was convinced that he could go at least one more day without the charms of New Orleans. 

They stopped at a place outside of Kansas City at eight, and by a quarter after, Sam was sliding his fingertips up the back of Dean's thighs, stopping every inch or so to push deep into the tight muscles.   When he reached Dean's ass, he followed the curve toward the centerline, sliding his fingertips along the lightly furry ridge behind his balls, pushing along the erection inside Dean, "the other seven inches," he called it. Dean's legs spread apart even farther.

"Where'dya learnnat?" Dean mumbled into the pillow, trying to buck up, but pinned under Sam's strong arms, expert fingers, and now his tongue.     
   
"If you could see how hard I am right now…" Sam mumbled.  He bent lower to lick along the ridge, his hair trailing over Dean's warm cheeks, his tongue running left and right, ever closer to where his nose was pressing in. Sam's fingers tippled along Dean's cock, his warm tongue where they both needed it to be.

***

Day three had involved a traced credit card, a hasty backdoor departure, then a tedious zig-zag down the one-lane back roads of rural Missouri and Arkansas to avoid the law.  Dean soon rediscovered the downside of caffeine withdrawal, while Sam curled up in a ball against the door, his own head pounding as the car bounced over rutted gravel and potholed pavement.  What seemed like the same sunburned man in sweat-stained overalls eyed them from every porch and trailer stoop.

In Shreveport, they chanced the interstate again. In Metairie, they grabbed a late lunch at a truck stop that had no police cars in the lot; Dean refueled the Impala and swung into the convenience store to refuel his aching head, got in line five people back, then noticed the cashier was so slow she seemed almost motionless.  He rubbed his face to shed the fatigue and glanced at the security monitor out of sheer boredom, hoping it was getting his good side.  A man brushed past him, apologized quickly and stood a good foot and half behind, arms laden with snacks and breathing loudly.  Dean looked back, a little puzzled, then looked up at the camera again and saw the man's eyes flash.  Not once, but three times, as they shifted from side to side.  He left the drinks wedged on the cracker shelf and headed for the exit.

"Shapeshifter.  In line," he said into the open window of the Impala, and headed to the trunk.

Sam joined him, quickly pushing the cover of the weapons cache back down. 

"And you're going to do what, take him out on camera in front of a crowd?  You remember how that went the last time, in the bank?"

"Then we tail him."

"We tail him," Sam agreed, relieved. 

After ten minutes of staring at the sliding doors, Sam asked, "Did he take a different shape in there, Dean, or what?  Is there a back door?"

"The cashier's hopeless.  He'll be out soon."  Dean's eyes were locked on the exit, and when the man came out, Dean turned the key and pulled forward slowly.

"Easy…" said Sam softly.

The man, about twenty, got into a gray van, which was nearly impossible to follow through the heavy rush-hour traffic, and night was falling quickly.

"I lost him.  Dammit."

"Turn around," said Sam, looking back at a side street.  "I think he turned left."

The street was pitch black and the lights of the van were far ahead by the time they got there. 

"Where the hell are we?"

"No idea, Dean. Stay back, or he'll see us; there's no one else out here."

"There's _nothing_ out here.  Just abandoned lots."  He killed the lights and rolled forward into the dark.

"He's gone," said Sam.

"Gone to ground.  Must have a den around here."  Dean was ready for a hunt now, fully awake.

The dark in the area was oppressive, even with the sky dimly lit by the glow of the city.  There were no lights, and only occasional houses, boarded up and silent.  Two streets ahead, they found the van, parked off to the side behind an overgrown hedge, no one in sight.  Dean moved toward a derelict house, but Sam called him back almost immediately, motioning him to kneel as he shone his flashlight under the van.  Dean joined him on the ground and saw hidden behind the van a large storm drain. 

"God, I hate shapeshifters.  Why can't they live in houses?  Always the damned sewer lair."

***

The sewage stench was overwhelming – and they hadn't even found the nest yet.

"Is it still in here?" Sam asked, his gun tucked into the back of his jeans. He was trying not to speak, or even exhale, because each breath made him retch a little.

Andy "Red" Reynolds, now a grey-haired pug of a man, drew back against the wall of the side tunnel where he had crept in, hiding himself as a pair of flashlight beams tracked left, then right across the room and low voices filled the small entry tunnel. 

"What do you think, from that smell?" Dean wheezed.

"I'm trying not to smell anything."

Sam swung his flashlight across the shadows of the far wall, then up toward the ceiling. His beam drifted back down across a dripping waterfall of green slime running to the floor and caught, as if stuck, on the source of the rotting dank – a clot of decomposing, oozing…

"I can still smell _that_ ," Sam observed quietly, keeping his breath shallow.

Dean sighed with disgust.  "Aw, god, what is _wrong_ with these damn things?  There's gotta be six or seven in that pile."

Red lifted his night-vision goggles and examined the two strangers trespassing on his hunt.  The machete slid from its sheath on his back without a sound and he gripped it, ready to sever the ghoul's head and maybe scare off the intruders as well.

A shadow moved along the far wall, then was again only shadow. 

"They're in here all right," said Dean, aiming his flashlight at the corner, pinning the dark-haired young man from the gas station there in its light, blinking and terrified.

When the shapeshifter came into view, Red's face revealed rare shock and pain; it wasn't his son's face.  It wasn't Charlie.  It had taken someone else's child now. For a second, his gun slipped lower.

Dean looked at the dark-haired man from the gas station for a second, then moved in to grab the fake skin that shapeshifters created from their victims' appearance.  His gun was aimed at the thing's heart, a silver bullet poised in the chamber.  

"YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY BROTHER!" came an angry voice. 

A second man, older, maybe 25, leaped from the shadows into Dean's path, shoving the younger man behind him.  He was desperate, ready to fight and die, Dean could tell.

In the darkest part of the tunnel that he'd staked out, Red held his machete and his shotgun, unsure now where to strike first. 

Dean was equally unsure, thrown off stride by what might be a simple ruse, but one that shocked him nonetheless.  He'd certainly never thought of shapeshifters as … the family sort.

Sam was at his side, whispering to him.

"Dean, they could be telling the truth."

"You wanna _talk to them_?"

The younger one had vanished into the dark, but the older one stood his ground in Dean's flashlight beam, gun pressed to his chest, ready to sacrifice himself.

"If they _are_ brothers, we need to know what's going on.  There could be others."

"Then we kill them both before they kill again."   
"We don't kill," said the shapeshifter.  Its voice was human enough, the emotion in it sincere.  Dean released his grip on the man, but kept his gun level.

"But you do," it accused, gesturing with its chin toward the gun.  "And _he_ does," said the shapeshifter, looking over Dean's shoulder, pointing into the dark.  Dean's skin crawled; he just knew there was another one out there about to jump him.

Behind Dean, Sam heard the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked; he whipped a salt-loaded shotgun from his belt, pushing Dean down to aim as best he could at the darkness beyond.  A howl reverberated against the shotgun blast, echoing through the cavernous space, and Sam's beam fell across an angry man, blood running down his cheek and neck as he fired back at the source of light.  The bullet narrowly missed Sam's head, and he dropped to the ground, burying the flashlight in his pocket, struggling to find Dean. 

For a few seconds it was utterly dark, the deafening gunshots echoing away down tunnels of dank water and sewage, then returning, distorted and sharpened, before running off down other lost passages.

"Sam!" Dean whispered desperately.

"Here," Sam replied, as softly as he could.  They found each other on the ground and Dean leaned in to Sam's ear, suggesting a way to retreat from the shapeshifters and the gunman, whoever he was.  He spoke softly, with his lips tight against Sam's ear, and for a second, that soft warmth was all Sam sensed in the void. 

Dean stood and tossed a can he'd found toward the far wall where the gunman had been.  It struck with a clang, and rolled briefly, giving him a picture of the space in his head.  He grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him slowly back, then left at the corner and further back up the low tunnel the way they'd come in.  After a few minutes of moving as quietly as they could through the narrowing concrete passage, they saw a rectangle of dim light, the night sky.

***

There was no pursuit, it seemed; no other car parked nearby that they could see. 

"Who was that, Dean?"  Sam sounded panicked.  "Their father?"

"It was a hunter.  A stupid one."

"How do you know that?"

"He brought a machete – he wanted to decapitate them.  Thinks they're ghouls."

The word brought them both painfully back to reality, back to Adam, and to their own father's drive to slaughter every evil creature he could find, living or undead. 

"Let's go, Sam."  Dean stood at the door of the Impala, waiting for Sam to open his side. 

Sam was thinking, but Dean didn't need a thinky Sam, he needed a hot shower.

"Sam.  Get in."  It was a little deeper, bossier.

"You had your gun pointed at a shapeshifter and you didn't kill it.  Why?"

"I did have someone shooting at me, too."

"No, Dean, you had plenty of time.  What stopped you?"

Dean was silent.  Finally, he said, "I needed to be sure.  Make sure it isn't a person.  A human."

"We saw the skins – you knew they were shapeshifters." Sam pressed for some comment about the startling fact that shapeshifters had brothers.

"Well, there were two of  'em, and we need to know more before we go back, like you said."

Sam left it for now, frustrated.  Dean agreeing with him was perhaps the best-known sign that a conversation was over.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry.  Getting into you when I'm all covered with this filth…" Dean commiserated with the car until Sam cleared his throat.

"We need a place to stay, Dean."

"We'll have to go down a couple of stars from our usual, but I'm going to find us a place with unlimited hot water and soap." 

  


* * *

  



	3. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-delayed vacation from the approaching Apocalypse puts Sam and Dean into the middle of a nasty fight between a psychotic hunter and his prey. But it's Thanksgiving, a day for family. Can't we all just get along?

**4**   


  
_But you had to do it the hard way…_

  
**New Orleans – Val-U-King Motor Court, one day to Thanksgiving**

"We could've stayed in the French Quarter. Between a bar and a brothel, Sam. A bar AND a brothel."

"Covered in sewage?"

"Who would have noticed? All the college kids are drunk off their asses anyway. It's a good thing you went to school at Stanford, far from this sort of… temptation."

"We're never far from that," Sam noted darkly.

Dean ignored the remark, jamming the thin, scratchy towel into his ear to get all of the water out, then wiping the last tiny dry bit of towel down his chest, where it soaked up the drops from his third shower.

He settled on the corner of the bed, talking to Sam, the room in general, and the TV.

"Like old times, Sam. Hunt a monster down, kill it, get covered in crap. Throw the damn ball!"

"Except Dad never let you shower three times."

"Dad never let us screw around with each other after our shower either. Okay, well, that sounded really gross the way I said it, but you know what I mean. Things are different now, Sam. We make our own way." His voice was sincere, the emotion behind it firm and unshakeable.

The game distracted him briefly, but he had laid back next to Sam on the bed they were sharing; the other bed made a perfect place to lay weapons out. Dean snored himself awake twice before Sam finally took the remote from his hand and switched the TV off.

"HEY!" Dean protested sleepily, and then glanced back at his brother in the now-quiet room and waggled his eyebrows.

"Look Dean, two rounds is all I can manage. We were up at four this morning and it's 2 a.m. now. We need to sleep."

"Your loss…."

Dean drifted off, leaving Sam to consider the pair of shapeshifters and the man who'd shot at them. In the brief moments caught in the beam of the flashlight, Sam had seen a look of insanity, a man armed to the teeth, a hunter ready to strike. Rather than sleep, Sam went through his father's journal until he found something that made sense. It was bad now, and could only get worse.

Dean slept poorly, not because of the headlights and highway noise, or the fight next door an hour later, or the wet spot under him, but because he kept seeing Ronald Reznick, alive and dead, and then as a sloughed-off skin. He saw himself shooting the head of the ghoul who had impersonated his brother – his other brother. None of it was true, but it held in his mind. Sam was true, through death and Hell and the Apocalypse and the great angelic meatsuit battle to come.

"He's my brother," Dean blurted out, waking himself in the night.

Sam woke as well, and draped his long thigh across Dean's leg, pinning him in place. Dean's breathing calmed almost immediately and he was asleep again. After a few minutes, Sam gently moved his leg back and laid himself flat, the covers across his chest, wound around his hands.

***

The next morning, Dean woke to a knock. Sam was in the shower, again. Dean grabbed the shotgun from Sam's nightstand and stood to the side of the door.

"No maid service!" he barked, his voice still hoarse from the dry air in the room.

He heard footsteps moving off, but when he looked out the peephole, no one was there. He opened the door, but the balcony was empty in both directions. He closed the door, put the gun on the table and rapped on the bathroom door.

"YEAH?"

"GOING TO GET SOME BREAKFAST."

"NO CHEETOS."   
"GOTCHA."

Dean smiled, and wondered at that, conversing with himself all the way down the stairs to the vending machines. The motel lot was half full, but a red truck had parked near the stairwell in the handicapped spot.

"Is it just getting away from Cas? Is it those goddamn magic fingers Sam's got all of a sudden? Why do I feel so good?"

Dean's head hit the front of the vending machine hard and all the happy was gone. He was whipped around so fast the blade at his neck started to cut in. It was the wide-eyed, flat-faced man from the sewer, fresh wounds of a rock salt blast on his cheek. _Bad aim, Sammy. We need to practice._

"You're dead, or didn't you know? John's boys fell off the radar for good. That's how they tell it. And now I find Dean Winchester right here in New Orleans, blocking my line of fire when I finally _finally_ " – and here he grabbed the back of Dean's head and pushed the machete hard up under his chin – "had the ghoul that killed my boy and hung around defiling his image for DECADES!!"

His voice cracked at the last word, then a frightening calm was all Dean could see in his face.

"So I have to ask myself, what kind of hunter lets ghouls walk free? One who wants to die with them, I think."

Sam raised his gun to the man's head, and cocked it very slowly.

"What kind of hunter turns on another hunter, Red?" Sam asked, pushing the barrel into the base of the man's neck.

Red lowered the machete from Dean's neck, but it stayed in his hand. Dean jammed his palm up under Red's jaw, dropping him without a sound.

"Just in time, Sammy. And you remembered to put your jeans on."

"Saw him pull up after you left; jeans were all I had time for," said Sam, checking Dean's neck and the thin red line. "Lemme clean that out."

***

The motel's back stairs, normally used for evading police and the occasional suspicious spouse, helped them get Red back up to their room unseen.

Red took forever to wake up and Dean was now starving for breakfast and irritable. He also had a thin cut across the side of his neck and the best Sam could do was soap and water and a little tape. They talked while Red slumped in the chair, bound with rope.

"He's serious about hunting these things till they're gone," Sam whispered.

"He's after a _ghoul_. He'll never find one."

"Dad broke off all contact with him for this exact reason. It's in his journal, it was that serious."

"Dad thought someone was too obsessed with revenge?" Dean blurted out, shocked when he considered the implications.

"Red," Dean said, slapping him on the cheek. "RED!" he yelled, and the pug-faced man snapped awake, his eyes boggling enough to make Dean pull back in shock.

"You know me?"

"Found out a little about you," Dean said, as Red struggled with the rope holding back his arms. "You're a sick one, Mr. Andy Reynolds. Revenge at any cost? This ghoul thing you think you've got down there, it's a –"

"It killed my wife and kid – ate part of Charlie. It played with his body, coming to me year after year looking like him. I'm gonna kill it, kill both of them. And if you help me, I'll let you live."

Dean smirked at this empty threat; Sam just watched the man through narrowed eyes.

Sam motioned Dean toward the window. Red looked the room over, every inch, as they talked.

"Let's let him go, and we'll be gone before he can find us," Dean suggested. "If Cas can't find us, how is this loser going to? We can take on one crazy hunter."

"Bad idea, Dean. And what about the … the things we saw down there?" Sam whispered it; Red was listening attentively.

Dean got the final word, and turned back to Red, who watched him warily.

"Get the hell out of here," he said, opening the door and loosening the rope that tied Red's arms. "It's Thanksgiving. Call it a pardon for the turkey."

"You get in your truck and drive away. We'll be keeping an eye on you," Sam added. "We know where you live."

"When they're gone, you'll be next," Red threatened, backing toward the door. "No one will miss you after what you've done – a hunter taking the devil's side!" The pug-dog face was arrogant, but he was only thinking of the ways he could kill them.

***

They stood in the doorway, watching Red drive off in his pickup and arguing about how Dean had let a threat go free; over their squabbling, someone cleared his throat loudly.

Dean looked down the balcony at a blondish man in a trucker cap and Carhardt jacket who stood just out of reach. Dean wouldn't have worried, normally, but the other man behind him, who could have been a younger brother of Rufus, looked positively terrified, and that almost always meant trouble.

"No Girl Scout cookies, thanks," said Dean. They stared blankly at him.

"It's about last night," said the blond man.

"You must be mistaken," said Dean, moving to brace the door but otherwise remaining unconcerned.

"You were in the storm drain with us. You're hunters."   
Despite the odd turn this conversation had taken, Dean appreciated the honest, direct approach. He held the door open about a foot; Sam picked up the gun behind him and aimed, but the men didn't flinch. The younger one was looking at the ground, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"He's after us too. And he won't stop until we're dead. Then he'll come for you," said the younger man, quietly, sounding much too close to Sam in one of his dour moods.

"You look different. Did you kill someone else?"    
"We don't kill," said the taller one, his tone now impatient as well as nervous.

"And you didn't kill us either," said the blond one. "That makes you different from every other hunter we've ever heard of. We're willing to trust you; enough to come out in public to find you."

***

Dean held both guns after Sam put his down. The men sat on the foot of the unused bed; the other bed hadn't been made up in days and was a bit of a mess.

"You know what we are, but you let us go," said the one in the trucker cap. "And you didn't kill that other hunter just now."

"You saw that?"

"We try to keep ahead of him. Know his movements. He hasn't caught on yet, so as long as we keep changing…"

"Why don't you just leave town?" Sam asked, changing the subject as Dean twitched.

"This is where we've always lived. This is home."

"In the sewer," Dean added, pointedly.

"It's safe, it's dark, and people seem not to notice the odor of the castoffs."

" _Castoffs_. Write that one down for your monster book, Sam. We learned a new word today."

"Are there more like you?" Sam asked. "Family?"

"There are two others we know of, one up by Pontchartrain, one in the Quarter. They aren't family. Our family drove us out when we started to…" He trailed off. Embarrassment and sadness showed around his eyes.

"But you're the good kind of shapeshifter," Dean offered skeptically.

"You know very little about shapeshifters," replied the younger one, still not looking Dean in the eye.

"Enlighten me."

"We don't have to kill. Some do, and some just use the shape to steal, or worse. We have jobs."

"Really." Dean was tiring of this. He wanted the happy morning that he'd planned in his head back.

"We're very mild-mannered," added the older one quickly, a bit of an edge to it now, despite the sentiment. "Listen, he'll return – here, the sewer; night after night he keeps coming. Mumbling to himself about ghouls. He _will_ kill us, eventually, unless we do something. And he'll come after you now, for helping us."

"We need a plan," said Sam.

***

"Red bought it. He'll be there." Sam sounded confident.

"He has to know it's a trap, Sam."

"So we know he'll bring others with him."

"Don't get me wrong, I love spending an evening in a dive bar, punching a guy in the face –"

" – and then when he spins around, I hit him hard from the other side." Sam chuckled. "What did we get that guy in Ocala up to?

"Six hits?" Dean had relaxed now, too, and chuckled.

A long silence filled the room, an easier silence than the circumstances warranted.

"I miss this. Spending time with my brother, kicking ass." Dean looked at Sam. "Haven't had this much fun in a long time. I should have said that to you before."

Sam smiled.

***

That evening, as Dean laid out gear for the fight, he felt something press against his back.

"Don't move."

"Sam, we need to…"

"Don't. Move. Let me. A little something quick."

Sam pressed slowly forward and Dean braced himself against the wall. There was no belt buckle to fumble with, no pants to shove down clumsily – Sam was already naked. He slid Dean's t-shirt up so he could press against that broad back, then ran his hands down the front of Dean's jeans, right into the warmest spot he knew.

Dean groaned just a little and shook his hips, helping Sam work his pants down until they dropped around his knees; he pulled his own briefs down, not wanting to break the warm bond against his back, or lose the strong arms on either side of him.

Sam moved his hips back just slightly, letting his cock trail down Dean's back until it rested on his ass, then he pushed forward until it lay pressed between Dean's cheeks. For a long while that was all that Dean's mind knew – the warm length and the power behind it. Slowly, Sam slid his cock up and down, over the soft, muscled hole, bringing his favorite noise from Dean's throat, finally thrusting deeper down between Dean's legs.

Sam stroked harder, rubbing his long cock between Dean's thighs. The low balls that hung between Dean's legs swung with each sharp thrust, forward and then back against the head of Sam's cock. Dean tightened his stance as Sam pushed his face into Dean's shoulder and bit softly into his shirt and the muscle underneath. A natural lubrication eased the way soon enough, and Sam thrust forward faster.

Sam kept up this rhythm for nearly five minutes, until Dean was a sweat-covered mess, begging for a fuck. Sam reached around, gently removed Dean's hand from his cock before he came, and stepped back.

"You hold onto that thought. Pull your pants up. We need to go stop a rogue hunter," Sam said in a low voice.

 _Dammit._ Dean held onto the thought. _DAMMIT, SAM._

***

They'd made it to the motel office when Sam suddenly stopped.

"Dammit, I left the Liquor Inspector badge in the room," Sam swore under his breath, interrupting Dean's play by play of how the fight would go down when they got there.

"You _what_? Sam, we’re just taking a little time off with this trip, not forgetting everything I ever taught you."

"Leave it, Dean." The exasperation slipped out around the edges as he turned and headed back across the lot towards their room.

When Sam finally disappeared around the corner at the top of the stairs, Dean turned and scanned the street north and south. The bar wasn't more than half a mile south and a few blocks over.

 _And I let two shapeshifters walk away instead of ganking them._

It was already late, nearly 10 pm, and he was hungry.

 _The older one kept his brother out of my line of fire the entire time they were in our room. Did the same thing in the sewer._

Sam went into their room, got what he needed out of the bathroom wastebasket, then picked up the ID from his bag, where he'd left it.

"Now I'm ready," he said.

Dean heard him clomping down the stairs, even over the _thump-a-thump_ coming from the windows of the Montego that had just pulled up at the motel office.

"You're getting sloppy, Sam."

Sam gave him a look that might have been "I can't believe I did it with my brother," but that was not one of Sam's expressions anymore; hadn't been, for years.

Dean gave him a raised eyebrow in return and they headed off down the street in silence.

  


* * *

  



	4. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-delayed vacation from the approaching Apocalypse puts Sam and Dean into the middle of a nasty fight between a psychotic hunter and his prey. But it's Thanksgiving, a day for family. Can't we all just get along?

**5**

 _There's a man in the shadows with a gun in his eye  
And a blade shining oh so bright_

 __

  
**New Orleans – Snake and Jake Christmas Club Lounge, Thanksgiving Day**

Dean pulled the door open and the music got loud.

"That's a nice holiday touch," Sam groused.

"Skynyrd is always a nice touch," Dean replied, casually scanning the bar for trouble. The smell was something like a cigarette stubbed out in the remains of a whiskey shot, rank and stale.

"I can't believe they're open today. And crowded."  "Bars are always open on Thanksgiving, Sammy. It's where all the people without families go."

Dean shut his mouth right then, but it was too late, and the words stung.

"I recognize the smell in here. From when we were… teenagers."

 "Of course you do, Sam. Dad took us to dinner at that place outside Tulsa for Thanksgiving – you were…"

"I was twelve. In a bar."

"Your first whiskey shot, if I remember correctly."

  "It made me puke all over you."  

Dean grimaced at the unwelcome image he recalled all too clearly, and he didn't have to change his expression when they got to the lavish but unappealing Thanksgiving dinner buffet " _with All the Trimin's_ " set up along the back wall in a series of mismatched plastic bowls. As if to top it all off, .38 Special's "Jingle Bell Rock" began playing on the jukebox. Sam laughed.

 "Oh that is _so wrong_." It was Dean's turn to grouse for a while.

***

"So who've we got here?" Dean asked, pushing his third helping of turkey into his mouth.

  "Bartender, barflies, losers, college kids, and lonely hearts, from the look of it."

Sam's leg rubbed against his, breaking his concentration.

"Sorry," said Sam, moving it to the side but hitting the table post and bringing it back against Dean's leg again.

 Dean pushed back, pinning Sam's leg against the post and setting his boot hard against Sam's. He pushed his hand along the strong thigh trapped there, sliding his fingers up the smooth denim and over the taut muscle. 

"I'm still holding that thought, Sam," he said, giving him a look that made Sam's eyes widen. "Thank God for small tables," he added, stretching his arms wide to lay one behind Sam's broad shoulders, a satisfied look on his face. Sam seemed to pale.

"Dean, there he is!" Sam practically jumped when he said it.

Dean looked over at the door and saw the same squat, pug-faced man entering the club. He hid it well, but to Dean the bearing of a hunter was unmistakable.  They watched Red scan the room, settle at the bar just six feet away, toss back a scotch, then turn to scan the tables again. After a moment, he stood up and headed directly for them.

"Here we go," said Sam.

Dean stood up, a good foot taller than Red, and put his hand out to stop him.

"You got here early," Red noted, impressed.

"We thought you'd want to get your information as soon as possible," Dean said calmly, reassuring the man with his kindest smile. Sam winced at that smile and the impending ass-kicking it implied.

"And walk right into your trap? Why not? So how about you tell me where you think the ghouls are."

"They're moving. We tracked them down to the park south of the university, close to the river in an old drainage tunnel."

"And now that I know, should I go running over there? Or should I drop you right here – trust me, no one will notice a couple of college boys who've had too many."

"You said you wanted to hear our side. Pull that knife and you won't make it out of here," Dean said, his tone now menacing.

Red let his hand drop from behind his back, the knife still in its holster, waiting.

The bartender was watching them, sensing trouble. He motioned to a few of the regulars to get out and pulled his shotgun from under the bar.

"We know what happened, Red. To your kid. We're sorry."

"You know nothing. It killed my wife, and three other women after her – it _ate_ half my son's body! It wore his face for decades, showing up wherever I went. I know what I saw. And whatever your daddy told you about me, he was lying."

Dean's shoulders knotted up so tightly Sam could hear the joints in his back popping.

"Our father thought you'd crossed a line, turning on another hunter like that," Sam intervened. It only served to push Red a little farther into the hell of his memories.

"That sonofabitch Jacob was my partner for years and then he let a vampire walk away because it gave him some bullshit sob story about drinking from animals. Ain't my fault he couldn't win a knife fight."

There was a palpable craziness in the air around him that grew stronger with each word. Red's hand was back on the hilt of his knife, but Sam was watching his every move. When the knife flashed out toward Dean's stomach, Sam launched himself and swung wildly, blindly, connecting with his left fist and snapping Red's head to the right, before realizing he'd left himself open to the blade if Red didn't go down. And he didn't.

 Red swung his knife arm wide, slashing the air as Sam leaped back. Dean took the opportunity to hit Red with a hard right cross that made his knuckles sting. Sam shattered bone the second time he connected, hurling Red back a good three feet with his blow.

Dean stared at Sam for a moment, then said, "You've been working out too much, you know that?"

The bartender pulled his gun out from under the bar and raised it shakily to aim at the three of them. It worked well with the drunks, especially the nasty ones, but not this time.

"Not your fight. Get out now." Dean already had his shotgun pointed at the bartender, who'd never been outgunned so quickly before. "The rest of you too," he yelled at the stunned crowd. "Come on!"

"Call the cops and we'll hunt you down!" Sam yelled. Dean turned to give him a true what-the-fuck look.

In the scramble that followed, Dean and Sam stood back to back as the patrons raced past them for the exit. Red vanished in the confusion.

"The table in the corner, Dean."

  "I see 'em. Friends of his, I'm guessing."

In the darkest corner of the very dark bar, lit only by strands of Christmas tree lights, was a table with three men, two still finishing their drinks. They were not running in panic but watching Sam and Dean closely. Two looked like hired muscle, one had a Glock that he aimed at them. He wouldn't miss with only fifteen feet between them.

"Four against two. Piece of cake," muttered Dean.

"You boys _must_ be the ones Red wants taken down. With a name like Winchester, I thought you'd be better armed," said the bald one with the gun, aiming at Sam now.

Dean moved in front of Sam, keeping their bodies close together, and his own body between Sam and the gun. He could feel the reassuring size of his little brother, their backs up against each other again.

Red stumbled up from the floor, his face contorted in rage, knife twitching in his hand.   "Keep the gun on them – don't shoot," he snarled, blood spattering from his nose and mouth as he spoke. "I'm gonna make this last a while. Kill these little shits myself. We can go get the ghouls after."

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

 "I'm not cut out for this," Sam whispered over his shoulder.  

"What?"

"Four against two, outgunned, what the hell kind of fight is that?"

  "Every single fight we've ever had?" Dean replied, confused. "Wuss attack – nice timing, Sam."

"Dean, I'm really sorry. Really, really sorry."

  "Sam! Fight now, emo later!" he whispered loudly over his shoulder. He was more than a bit worried, and would have turned around right then and there, but his shotgun was the only thing keeping Red away from them.

"You have to promise to forgive me."

"What are you talking about?!"

Sam put his head back, laying it against Dean's, and gave the loudest, oddest shriek Dean had ever heard; it rang through his head and he screwed his eyes shut at the pain, as did Red. Two men burst through the back entrance, distracting the two henchmen nearest that door.

"No, it can't be…" Red gasped at what he'd heard and what he thought he saw now.

"Sam, what the hell was that-"

"Promise you'll forgive me," Sam interrupted again.   "What have you done now?"

Red's man nearest the back door was stunned; he turned to look back at Sam, then again at the man running toward him. Dean turned to look around Sam's shoulder and saw a huge man tackle one of the goons, and then Red and the man with the gun closed in.

"Hold on. Here we go," said Sam, sounding like he'd found a little courage after all.

Sam waited for the bald man to get within range…

His roundhouse kick knocked the gun from the bald man's hand and broke two of his fingers before he could think of firing.

Dean, swinging around behind Sam's kick, followed through to hit the man square in the face.

The man stumbled back and shook his head, clearing his vision just in time to see Sam punch him in the gut, then in the jaw; as he turned again, Dean threw a left and the man was spinning.

"Seven times, Dean. Let's go for it," said Sam, a huge grin on his face.

Four hits later, they'd broken their own record, and the man's jaw. He crumpled. Regrouping, they found themselves again back to back, warmer now, damp with sweat in the hot, unventilated club.

Red was fixated on the fight at the back of the bar, where his men, former football players, were getting their asses kicked. One man was hurled back and over the bar.

Dean, with a moment to breathe, watched himself gut punching the bigger of the two goons in the far corner. The guy fought back but he seemed outmatched by Dean, who was kneeling now on the man's arms, raining blows on him until he finally lay unmoving. Dean was impressed with himself, until he realized he was standing over by the buffet, looking around Sam's shoulder at this fight.

With some difficulty, Dean's brain was trying to make sense of what was either the worst out of body experience ever recorded, or a truly unnerving reality: that his twin had just pummeled one of the men into the floorboards. An exact copy of him, in fact.

"Oh, tell me you didn't do that," he muttered, his stomach turning.

"It was his idea," Sam said, very quietly.

This was all kinds of wrong, and he would have given Sam hell, but Red had recovered from his initial shock and wrapped his arm around Dean's neck, pulling him away from Sam, knife again cutting into Dean's throat.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, seeing the silver knife in Red's hand.

A gunshot crackled in the tiny bar, and Sam shivered, then looked down at the blood staining his jacket. The bald man had crawled far enough to grab and aim a stray gun with his good hand.

"They're not ghouls, you idiot, they're shapeshifters! Get the silver knives from my truck and rip these four open. All of them! NOW!" barked Red. But his man didn't get far. The other Dean swung a chair at the man who'd fired the shot, knocking him to the floor in a heap; he then beat him with the leg of the chair. He only stopped when he looked over at Sam.

Dean stared in shock as Sam bled out. The shot was close range; it had to have hit something vital. Sam fell against a table, and dropped to his knees, lost in pain. Dean used Red's moment of distraction to flip him hard onto the floor, where he stayed.

Sam had bled through his shirt so freely, so fast; when Dean pulled the coat open to check the wound, pooled blood poured out onto the floor. It was all happening again, and he was fresh out of deals for his soul.

"Sam? SAM! Shapeshifters – nice trick. I forgive you."

"Dean? Are you all right?"

Dean whirled around. Sam stood over him, looking at his increasingly confused brother.

For all the limits he regularly crossed in his fantasies, Dean now realized with absolute certainty that he really didn't want what he had in front of him – two fully real Sams, one facing death, the other sweating and breathing hard from the fight he'd won.

"Sammy…" There was too much to bear in that voice, in that name.

Sam's face was full of regret, especially for keeping the deal secret, but he could only hope Dean would understand.

Red, lying prone on the floor, sensed his moment and rose up, bringing the knife down into Dean's back. Or he would have, if Sam hadn't seen the movement first and stomped hard on his neck, pinning him down.

"You two are worse than I ever heard of you," he rasped out, wriggling under Sam's crushing weight. "Teaming up against hunters with these…body-snatching monstrosities? You watch your brother die! It'll bring you pain like you can't imagine."

Dean could hardly breathe; the room was getting hazy. Sam lay crumpled in front of him, in a horrifying replay of his first death, and yet Sam stood over him, fists clenching, boot on Red's chest ready to silence him.

"Go to hell. You'll love it there." With that, Dean twisted around, grabbed Red's knife off the floor and sank it into his chest. Dean collapsed back on his ass, looking at the copy of Sam, and then at the copy of himself, who had wrapped himself around his wounded brother, and then finally up at the real Sam. Red lay in a pool of blood, his heart silent but his eyes open.

Sam was watching the shapeshifters; the older brother was doing something – something with the wound and his bodily fluids and…. Sam turned back to face Dean, embarrassed.

"It worked," he offered limply, apologetically.

"What the hell? Which one are you, even?"

"Your brother."

"Then that's…," and he turned back to the odd tableau of Dean holding Sam in his lap, the wound nearly healed.

" _My_ brother," said the other Dean.

"Dean, listen. I knew you wouldn't agree -"

"- Damn right I wouldn't agree! That's why you went behind my back with these…." He bit back an insult that might have rolled off his tongue a year or two earlier.

"They saved our lives, Dean."

"When did you – when did they-?"

"At the motel."

A lull followed, as Dean processed it all until it made sense. In the background, "Bat Out of Hell" blared from the jukebox.

"It was fun…" Dean said, putting Sam off guard. "Just tell me next time. Not used to you coming up with great plans all on your own, is all." He seemed petulant, but the pride in his voice was the same as the rare pride John had expressed to Sam; the tone didn't always match the words, but it didn't have to. "And now one of _you_ dies?" he asked, turning to the shapeshifters.

"We knew the risks. And my brother isn't going to die," said the shapeshifter Dean, interrupting. But we need to get out of here. The cops will be here soon, and the owner couldn't have gone far. And I have to tell you, honestly? You give 'brothers' a whole new twist, the things you two do. I'm guessing you know just as well as we do what it is to be freaks."

Dean flushed at this, a deep, hot, red embarrassment.

"Sam?" he asked, looking at the floor.

 "I didn't say anything, Dean."

"We picked up a little from when you touched him, in the sewer," the other Dean said, "and the motel room told us the rest."  

"We're that obvious?" Dean asked, truly bewildered to be having this conversation – and with himself.

 The shapeshifter Sam opened his eyes and looked up at his brother, then at Sam and Dean.

 "You two – the things you've done…" he slurred.

 "Yeah, we covered that before you woke up," said Sam, equally mortified.

"I mean, where you're headed…." He stood with some effort and shook his head. " _Our_ lives are better than yours. That's something I never thought I'd say."

  "Glad we could help with your self-esteem," Dean snapped, as the wail of sirens came closer.

 "Go. We'll be right behind you," urged Sam.

"Take care of your brother," said Dean quietly to them as they left, but Sam heard it.

One Sam and one Dean left, heading straight for the back corner of the lot and the overgrown culvert that ran back there.

The other Sam and Dean came out a moment later, and found only an empty lot. The police were almost there.

"No time, Sam. We'll never make it on foot."

Sam grabbed him and shoved him into a gap between some boards, through a fence and into a lush darkness so dense that the sirens seemed muffled. It was barely wide enough for their bodies up against the side of the club, and they pressed together, covered by vines.

  


* * *

  



	5. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long-delayed vacation from the approaching Apocalypse puts Sam and Dean into the middle of a nasty fight between a psychotic hunter and his prey. But it's Thanksgiving, a day for family. Can't we all just get along?

**  
6**   


_Ride his pulse and you forget  
Slow down your time will come  
 If not tonight surely by the dawn _

 __

  
**New Orleans – Against the wall of the Snake and Jake, the day after Thanksgiving.**

When the police arrived, they found four men inside, three unconscious, one dead.  The dead one was a drifter, they presumed, given his appearance and lack of clear identification.   That was until they searched the vehicles in the lot and found his weapons.  The other men had a variety of injuries and weren't able to tell their stories for a few weeks.  Outside, a trail of blood from near the buffet ended just outside the back entrance, near a large culvert where the water burbled up around a large mat of slime, then into a narrow drain far too small for a normal person to fit in. 

Against the side of the club, hidden by overgrown brush and vines and layers of old fencing, Sam pressed up against Dean to avoid the beams of the flashlights as the cops searched for something – anything – to explain the events in the club.  The two young men described by the owner were nowhere in sight. 

Sam could feel Dean's pulse pounding in the vein that ran down the side of his neck; his lips and cheek were pressed tight against it.  And Dean was hard.  Sam pressed himself against that as well. 

***

It was colder outside, well past midnight, and the cops had withdrawn to their cars, but the dark was still pierced with red and blue strobes.  Dean was warm under him, his heart still racing from the fight, the nearness of the cops, and a weird kink that Sam shared involving sex against walls.

Sam rubbed against Dean and felt Dean's grip around him tighten. He decided to have a little more fun.

"Do you know if I'm the real one?" Sam whispered, his lips brushing Deans' neck.

"Oh I know it's the real you.  I knew all along," Dean lied, breathing in Sam's scent of whiskey and flannel and sweat, just to be sure. 

"How can you be so certain?"

"That other Sam didn't shudder when I ran my hand up his thigh."  Dean was going to have a little fun of his own with this plan of Sam's.

Sam exhaled strongly, something between an exasperated chuckle and a growl, warming Dean's neck in the cold night air and sending the vibration through him.

"You groped my copy?"  Sam asked, fake outrage and the briefest jealously driving his cock up against Dean's.

"It looked EXACTLY like you."

"You owe me.  Big."

"And you owe me from this afternoon," Dean countered.

Sam got his arm around Dean, and said, "Hold that thought."  He turned Dean around, slowly, quietly, inevitably.  "Now take it like a man," Sam whispered.

"I am a man, now _fuck_ me like a man."

The cops made one more sweep, but never saw the overgrown jungle at the side of the club as a place anyone could hide, let alone a place to give your brother a long, slow fuck after midnight.

  
 **7**

 _So we gotta make the most of our one night together  
When it's over you know   
We'll both be so alone  
_

  
**Biloxi, Mississippi – end of November, 2009**

New Orleans never looked so sunny, so beautiful.  Sam and Dean weren't quite sure how to spend the week they had left in a way that didn't involve driving or sitting in a motel, so they went to a few voodoo shops and lifted all the serious mojo before it hurt the unsuspecting tourists, locking it up in the trunk of the Impala.

Back at the motel, they figured sex would fit the no-driving, no-sitting rules.  Sam showed Dean that skill with his hands he'd picked up somewhere.  Dean's brain throbbed high and low.  The next night brought celebrating, and drinking, and a toast "to brothers" in a less divey bar in Biloxi, where they'd found a better motel close to the beach. 

"You know," Sam said, "Bobby's never going to speak to us again if we leave Cas there for two whole weeks."

"If we just call Bobby and tell him where we are, we'll have Cas on the beach with us."

Sam tilted his head at Dean and the full meaning sank in. Dean was already dialing. 

"Bobby!  Yeah, a whole week.  No, it doesn’t seem like a month, what are you talking a-.. Oh, right."  He gave Sam a pained look, but Sam went back to his beer, smirking.  "Well, you tell-  no, Bobby, **_you_** tell Cas we're at the Valu-King Motel in New Orleans, if he needs us."

From those nights, Sam remembered the way Dean pressed against him, warm and steady, as he slept. It wasn't a romantic gesture, particularly, but it was constant. 

* * *

  



End file.
